Contrition
by AmberPalette
Summary: The next installment in a series of "letters" between Zelgadiss, written by Link Fangirl01, and Rezo, written by myself. Here Rezo insists that he does not deserve the reverence and forgiveness of his child, but will accept it anyway with thanksgiving.


**Contrition**

**By Amber S. ("AmberPalette")**

_Slayers © Hajime Kanzaka, Rui Araizumi, Software Sculptors, and Funimation._

_This is another response piece to a work by Link Fangirl01, titled "Lucky." That work was a response to my "Forgiven," which was a response to her "Learning To Forgive." These are a series of letters between Rezo and Zelgadiss Greywers. _

_I have AmeliaGreywords at deviantART to thank for the depressing but eloquent idea of Zelgadiss remaining forever a chimera and being forced to watch Amelia die. Let's hope that never really has to happen. _

_Enjoy._

Zelgadiss,

My incomparably sweet child. Where do you get such grace? It was not from I.

I have never deserved you, and I never will.

The other day on my way back from the Seyruun market's apothecary, I stumbled across an old woman with rheumatoid arthritis. As I was massaging the pain out of her joints, pain I myself know all too well (I am awfully old, after all), with a specialized form of the Recovery spell, she fondly recollected her late husband. She told me all about their life together: A life that ended after a tragically short time, like the most beautiful and briefest interval in a song. He died in his thirties, and she was forced to live the rest of her years in solitude. To come home to emptiness, to wince at every turn in the house, the day, and the night, at every certain sound, every scent, that reminded her of her lover's evacuation from this world. She told me there was a certain cadence to his footsteps, and she missed him like pins puncturing her heart every time someone walked the same way across floorboards. The smell of leather was his. On and on, there were things that ached her in recollection, and she admitted to me that she welcomed death and hoped it came soon.

…my child, are you…aware…of the anti-aging effect on your chimera body?

At times I feel your face, and listen to your Amelia, your pixie, your high note, trilling on in another room about the many social injustices which the Seyruun government ought to mend. And I think on how you will be alone someday, like that old woman with rheumatoid arthritis.

I think on how you will watch Amelia gasp her last, when the course of a natural human life is expended from her frail and temporary body, and hold her as her spirit flees, helpless, measuring every wrinkle on the visage that was once so young and sprightly, and know that you can do nothing to join her short of suicide.

Because of me.

You know…I remember…I remember the first time I ever served you tea. You were six or so. You drank every drop for me, and it was only when Zolf slipped you some contraband coffee, at your bedtime no less, that you realized you preferred that drink even to the finest green leaves from my herbal greenhouse that I could brew. I think that coffee of yours is revolting and it turns teeth brown. But you love it, you cannot start a day without a mug nor end a day without the jerking tremors of shuddering it out of your bloodstream, I say with a sigh, and so we have agreed to disagree on the merits of hot beverages.

We will have to arrive at the same acknowledgment that we shall never see eye-to-eye when it comes to my measure of worth to even still exist on this planet…much less to be at your side. I am fugitive from my own justice every breath I take near you.

I will never forget, as long as I live, the sound of you screaming in anguish, when I told you there was no cure that I yet knew of for this rocky prison in which I have thrown, and then forsaken, you. The sound of you wailing and sobbing until your voice grew hoarse and strangled, that I was lying, and then, that I was a bastard. All things that I DO deserve to hear.

All things that surpass even my memory of being maimed and swallowed alive twice by Shabranigdo, in my nightmares. The thought that I could do such great harm to the person I love more than ten of my own lives and still smile for even a second. That I am so weak, that I would let myself be so fooled, and so used. That I could stand, like an arrogant houseguest, grandiose and inflated with pretensions of martyrdom, in the body of Posel, and declare that all life was suffering and sacrifice, even yours. That what I did to you under the veil of your "appropriate" filial piety was somehow necessary. It was not, if I had realized what was really important, then. If I had not let my mind wander down corridors, serpentine corridors of greed, insanity, emptiness and obsession, that had been doubly padlocked for a reason.

And you wonder why I work all hours of the day and night until you drag me away from my laboratory, to find your cure. It is my only hope of redeeming myself to you. More importantly, it is my only hope of making you whole again, and rediscovering your happiness.

How many times I've stumbled, but the person whose knees were scraped was always someone else. Forgive me. Being a "genius" and a "holy man" (ha) never excused me from cleaning up my own messes. I promise you, I know that now.

You have a terrible habit of biting down on your tongue when you are really distraught. Sometimes blood trickles out the side of your mouth. That night when you learned of the true extent of my betrayal, I could smell the metallic odor of it.

I made my baby bleed.

Of course I want to see. Every minute of every day. But I sacrificed everything and everyone in the path of that goal. And so, do I deserve it? Never, my child. Don't think on it.

It was never seeing that gave me real joy. It was you. It's time I made that abundantly clear. It's time you were positive of my priorities. No mucking up the message by making my corneas and irises and retinas and pupils come alive and function normally. The two times in my existence that I ever saw, I was manic with greedy glee, at the glowing orb of the moon, at all the colors and the textures that bombarded me, until I realized that you were standing so far away from me, looking at me with such fear and revulsion. Both times, nothing that my eyes gluttonously gulped in could make up for that expression on your face. I had gained the world and lost my soul.

I insist your innocence because any crimes you may have committed, any darkness, abrasiveness, or brusqueness in your soul, any cynicism or doubt, are because of me. You were born pure and you are the best person I have ever known.

I have always been dreadfully bad at giving gifts. I botched a Christmas and your eighth birthday because of improper presents. For your fourth Christmas I gave you a jack-in-the-box. It was stupid. You have never liked surprises. You are the most methodical, logistical being on the planet, so different from me with my emotionally driven, quixotic impulses. I knew we were as different as two people could be, and should have tailored that gift to your preferences, not my own amusement. You cranked that lever so industriously. Out popped the grotesque face of the clown, and your shrieks could have been heard in Taforashia. It has always taken a great deal to burst you into tears, but there was a broken levee at that shock. You beat the tar out of that thing, flung it across the room, knocked down the tree and broke all the lights in doing so, and vaulted into my arms sobbing and begging me to vanquish the evil Box Mazoku. I don't think I have ever apologized so many times in a day. I felt horrible about it.

I took the jack-in-the-box to my laboratory and left it forgotten on a shelf. I am told that when you broke into my lab after the first time I died, Miss Lina broke the thing. Oh well, that's alright. A fitting fate for anything that tries to hurt you. I too am broken, in some ways, after all.

Then for your eighth birthday, I felt quite contrite over having been increasingly obsessed with experiments on the shadier side of the Sorcerers' Guild in my Sairaag laboratory. I wanted to get you a very big, very comforting gift as my apology, for that was the same year that you gave me such a wonderful birthday, you and Rodimus, putting brass Braille labels all over all the kitchen utensils so I wouldn't do anything so mortifying as spill your birthday cake on the floor again.

I went to a toy and chocolate emporium, the most expensive in the region, and fished my way around bins full of teddy bears. To me, the way you had described me a rainbow once, blue was the closest that came to your aura, your soul. And so I sought a blue teddy bear. There was a special bin for only blue bears. I found the fattest, softest one and paid for it. On my way down the hallway, in the mansion by my grey stone chapel, Eris accosted me. She asked me, somewhat quizzically, why I was giving you a pink teddy bear.

Pink.

The bin labeled blue teddies apparently sported an errant pink bear. The color, I was always told, of ultimate feminine mildness. The color of a baby's cheeks and cotton candy.

I could not give my tough guy a pink teddy. It would have offended you, I thought, and I was humiliated beyond bearing that my blindness had made me such a stupid bumbling half-rate father to you. So I pretended I hadn't gotten you a present, that we would go shopping for one the next day, and you were crushed, and the pink teddy bear also went into my laboratory.

I am glad that pink bear has finally made its way to you. But I should have just given you the damned thing the day you turned eight, and swallowed my pride. It wasn't as if my insufficiencies were any secret to you. You were my best friend even then, my child.

But I tried to make up for those insufficiences. I tried to compensate, I will grant myself that much. By showing my love as often as there was a chance. I remember when you were five and first learning to swim. Rodimus had you in a life jacket doggy paddling in the middle of the lake from which Noonsa hailed. But something frightened you, a charge in the cold current, and there again was one of those rare incidents in which you burst into tears. You kept wailing "gam-gam!" and I knew it meant I had to go to you. Around that moment you broke from Rodimus and flailed by yourself toward the shore. Rodimus panicked; he was an old knight and could only swim to you so fast.

Now I was terrified of water and still am. I cannot tell where I am going; it is impossible to ground myself and get my sightless bearings in the evasive, slivering mass that water is. I never learned to swim because of the rather crude sense of humor of schoolmates when I was a little boy; in a game of Marco Polo they made me be Marco, and one day left me for a lark while I shivered in the stream crying "Polo!"

But "gam-gam" is a much more galvanizing cry than "Marco" or "Polo." And my baby was the voice behind it. So fool that I am, I stormed into the lake water and charged toward you, heart in my throat, until the water had reached that height too. And then I froze, losing all capacity to think. I think some minnows had taken to nibbling on my toes by the time you reached me and latched onto my neck shivering. You calmed right down, smiled your wet cheek against mine, and declared you could swim better than I. And I just chuckled, trying not to faint from my own fear. It was worth nearly pissing myself in the lake to comfort you.

And maybe you got back at me a little for being such an old fool. Yes, in such a sweetly innocuous way. I love telling this one to your slaying friends, and to your Amelia. They always laugh and demand that I prove you were ever so ornery and carefree. I keep photographs; I can't see them, but the fact that a documentation of our happiness when you were small exists…oh, it gives me that real raw joy that I have told you about. The photograph they love best is one that was taken of the two of us in my greenhouse. It was shortly after you had gotten over my herbal teas and decided you were a coffee man. Fair enough, I said, but come help me garden this Sunday afternoon anyway. I feel lonely. You of course being so inconceivably devoted to me, gods forgive me for taking advantage of that, shoved back your chair at the kitchen table and agreed. You probably saw those lines under my eyes that deepen when I am trying to fight off a fit of melancholy.

We sojourned to the steamy glass house, in our sleeveless tunics and cropped pants, barefoot, with daubs of sunscreen on our shoulders and cheeks and noses, our limbs heavy in the summer heat, with straw sun hats. Hand in hand. You were six or so, and very proud that you were almost as tall as my belt buckle. No matter how sweaty our hands got, you kept swinging yours in mine and never let go. You led me there, as if I didn't know the way. I let you. My heart was swollen.

You asked me why I was crying. I just shook my head and laughed and dismissed it. I said the sun was warm, my Sun, and it felt nice. I think that embarrassed you a little; you gave your shy but content, breathy little laugh at that.

I had taken to growing tomatoes that summer; herbal remedies and teas were wonderful, of course, but I knew them by heart, and craved novelty. Thus yellow and red tomatoes. Irony of ironies, the red ones weren't taking, but the yellows thrived.

You snickered a little and told me you'd found the best one in the batch, and ordered me to open my hand.

I did. HA, and oh my, there it was: the slimiest thing in the world, wet and slinking along on my palm. A slug!

I don't think I have ever heard you laugh so hard in all your twenty-odd years. Because the disgusting mucus-coated mass just terrified me. I who didn't flinch at carrying around a bloody red ma-oh inside me, was petrified of slugs. I was jumping around, flailing my arms, trying to drop the abominable thing into the patch of failed produce. I am sure I resembled a rabid monkey doing a ritual mating dance. You practically screamed with giggles.

In the end, I laughed too. I took the garden hose and sprayed you with it, and you wrestled it from me and retaliated, and it became a fighting match of water in which you learned your first Aqua Create spell. We came back to the grey stone chapel where I daily healed pilgrims and orphans from the nearby village soaking wet, and the ill and afflicted who saw this all had a good laugh at our expense too. I stroked the wet curling hairs out of your eyes and kissed your face because it didn't matter where we were or what we were doing, you were always there and the mere fact that you existed made everything okay. Glorious, simple joy, all because of you, my child.

Your forgiveness continues to make all the difference, even though I shall never deserve those memories, which glow and palpitate with truth and life in my mind's eye, and always shall.

My sunshine, my light, my boy, what is your favorite memory of us? I would love to know. There is no wrong answer.

All my love, every last drop that can be squeezed out of this old soul,

Your gam-gam


End file.
